February 3, 2008
Locus Online: Locus Magazine's Recommended Reading: 2007
A few books and stories to pass those quiet moments.
(tags: books stories SF)
Science in the 21st Century
Conference participants include a bunch of really smart people with innovative ideas about the future of science and the interplay…
February 3, 2008
Well, that was unexpected....
February 3, 2008
Over at Aardvarcheology, Martin complains about US politics. This is bog standard European oh-you-benighted-Americans stuff, with a convenient one-sentence summary:
From a European perspective, US politics are an ongoing battle between the extreme Right and the middle Right.
This gets up my nose a…
February 3, 2008
I predict that I'm going to throw something at the tv if Arlen Specter doesn't go away. Like the Senate Judiciary Committee doesn't have anything more useful it could be doing than making a stink about an utterly pointless pseudo-scandal. And giving Gregg Easterbrook an excuse to be smug, on top of…
February 3, 2008
Halfway through the movie, the dog got up, and curled back up with her back to the tv, presumably in disgust.
When it ended, I said to Kate, "Well, that was anvilicious..."
"Seriously," said the dog. "All that peace and love stuff was a bunch of crap."
"It was a mite heavy-handed," I said.
"Harmony…
February 2, 2008
Things That Would Be Weirder Than "Green Porno" | The A.V. Club
"Then you unexpectedly come across the news that Isabella Rossellini is dressing up like various bugs and making a series of comedic short films about the way that insects have sex."
(tags: animals sex silly biology)
Essay - Why…
February 1, 2008
Lost in the '70s: Steve Martin, "Grandmother's Song" | Popdose
"Be obsequious, purple, and clairvoyant."
(tags: music silly)
The Third Annual A.V. Club Film Poll | The A.V. Club
The readers have their say.
(tags: movies review culture)
Good Math, Bad Math : Idiot Math Professors, Fractions,…
February 1, 2008
A counterpoint to Monday's question about tea:
The Super Bowl is Sunday, and a look in the fridge shows that I'm low on beer. What sort of beer should I buy to drink with the game?
Leave your suggestions in the comments.
Additional information: I generally prefer ale to lager, and don't much care…
February 1, 2008
A quick review of an important concept going into this weekend's Super Bowl:
The "point spread" for a football game is set at the level required to get equal numbers of bets on the two teams.
The spread is not the consensus opinion of expert observers as to the likely outcome of the game. The two…
January 31, 2008
Songs for the Dumped: The Prelude | Popdose
"[A] two-week anthology in which music nerds write about tracks they've attached to a particular crippling breakup, let you splash around in the stories behind them and hopefully, if we've done our jobs, make you feel slightly better about your own mi
(…
January 31, 2008
What's the difference between a "seminar" and a "colloquium"? Is there a difference?
January 30, 2008
Jacks of Science â Pimp my Hypothetical Home Laboratory
"Ever since I saw the painting shown above, I've wanted to suffocate birds in my very own home laboratory. As I got older, the desire to destroy life subsided, but the desire for a home laboratory remained."
(tags: science biology chemistry…
January 30, 2008
I doubt I need to tell any ScienceBlogs readers that the omnibus budget bill passed in December was a disaster in terms of science funding. There is still a faint hope that something might be done, if Congress can be made to act on a supplemental budget bill to restore some of the lost funding.
In…
January 29, 2008
The Edublogs Magazine : Who Are the Top Edubloggers?
"Aseem Badshah has created a listing of the Top Education Bloggers or edubloggers based upon Technorati's rankings." This page reviews some of them.
(tags: blogs education academia)
The Other Side of Graduate Admissions | Cosmic Variance
How…
January 28, 2008
Toonish Lite
The Warner Brothers cartoon RPG.
(tags: silly television comics games)
gladwell dot com - the ketchup conundrum
The definitive article on ketchup.
(tags: culture food history science psychology society)
PEDABLOGUE - Behind the Scenes of Rate My Professor
A review of every…
January 28, 2008
The folks at Physics Central are running a video contest, with the winner getting the world's smallest trophy:
Get your camera out... 'cause the world's smallest trophy is up for
grabs! You could win the smallest trophy ever made, and $1000 of (normal
sized) cash in the Physics Central Nano Bowl…
January 28, 2008
I don't drink coffee, and never have, but I used to drink a lot of tea. Unfortunately, I suspect that 6-8 cups of Earl Grey a day may have played a role in triggering the Great Stomach Unpleasantness a couple of years ago. Certainly, hot, acidic liquids with caffeine are on the List of things not…
January 27, 2008
illuminating science » What should we learn?
"should we teach the "standard" methods for doing multiplication and division (the usual multiplication ("carry the 3â³ etc) and the usual long division) or are students would be better off learning more "intuitive" methods?"
(tags: math education…
January 26, 2008
I got hit on the wrist with an elbow in Wednesday's lunchtime hoops game, which was painful enough to overcome my deep antipathy toward the medical profession, and send me to the doctor. After a referral to an orthopedist Friday morning, the verdict was a contusion of one of the umpteen little…
January 25, 2008
Senators Scrutinize Well-Endowed Colleges :: Inside Higher Ed :: Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education
There are too few smutty headlines in academia...
(tags: academia economics politics US)
Sorting Out Science » Blog Archive » Carnival of Space, Week 38 -- The Adventures of…
January 25, 2008
As promised (threatened?) in the previous post, here's a space for more general commentary in response to the question asked by our Corporate Masters, and modified slightly for blog use:
What non-scientific developments do you fear you'll be blogging or reading about in 2008?
Consider this open to…
January 25, 2008
The questions posed in yesterday's posts about hopes for 2008 were half of what we were asked by the Powers That Be. The other half:
What scientific development do you fear you'll be blogging or reading about in 2008?
As with yesterday's posts, the original question was more general, but I…
January 24, 2008
Endowment Spending Rate Drops Slightly :: Inside Higher Ed :: Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education
"Colleges with endowments larger than $500 million spent on average only 4.4 percent in 2007. For colleges with endowments greater than $500 million but less than $1 billion, that's the…
January 24, 2008
As promised (threatened?) in the previous post, here's a space for more general commentary in response to the question asked by our Corporate Masters, and modified slightly for blog use:
What non-scientific developments do you hope to be blogging or reading about in 2008?
Consider this open to all…
January 24, 2008
A little while ago, the Corporate Masters asked us to answer a couple of questions for possible inclusion in the first '08 issue of Seed. I originally posted this back in November, but got asked to take it down because the issue was hush-hush. The street date for the magazine in question was this…
January 23, 2008
Downloading by Students Overstated :: Inside Higher Ed :: Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education
The MPAA inflated numbers for student downloading by a factor of three. Gee, and they seemed so honest...
(tags: academia movies computing stupid internet)
blogs | The A.V. Club
Nathan…
January 23, 2008
Over at Biocurious, Phillip has a post on the generic science seminar outline:
1. Introduction of Esteemed Speaker by Local Professor with the largest overlap in research interests. Enumeration of every award Esteemed Speaker has ever garnered is standard issue, and if Local Professor and Esteemed…
January 23, 2008
I haven't linked to Inside Higher Ed in a few days, but lest you think I've forgotten them, they have a short piece today about the results of a survey of employers "with at least 25 employees and significant hiring of recent college graduates," regarding the preparation of their recent hires.
It…
January 23, 2008
Some time back, Dave Munger and someother folks put together a site called BPR3.org designed to aggregate posts that discuss peer-reviewed research papers in detail. A major weakness of this was that it's sort of difficult to remember what the acronym stands for (every time I try to figure it out,…
January 22, 2008
In the Fatosphere, Big Is in, or at Least Accepted - New York Times
Tune in to the denialism blog for an explosion in 5... 4... 3...
(tags: medicine food society blogs)
Flagging economy needs science investments
The head of Intel blasts Congress over the science funding debacle.
(tags:…
